Wow, where did this week go?

Blinked and missed this week, LOL. I'm sure just about everyone is as busy as me though, it's that time of year isn't it?

Cleaning out the pantry gave me the motivation to have a go at a few other things around the place that needed a similar (belated) spring clean, and I've been spending some quality time in the garden, which has been wonderful! Plans are now afoot to turn the whole backyard into a "food forest" throughout the next twelve months, which will be a pretty exciting project :-) I figured I'm half way there already, I might as well just keep going and progressively rip out (most of) the remaining ornamental plants and replace them with food plants. I've even started by ripping out two of the Murraya bushes I was growing as privacy hedge along the back fence. They will be replaced by the apple trees I have in pots, although the drainage is pretty poor so I may keep them in pots as yet? Lots of ideas to put down on paper over the Christmas break, and lots of reading to do :-)

After much debate (almost 6 months!) about the appropriate type of timber we should use, we also finally had the timber delivered this week for an arbour for two grape vines I have growing. It will be like an awning attachment to our existing pergola, which will extend the area underneath a little and provide more much-needed summer shading for that area :-) Unfortunately in the end, for a variety of reasons but primarily because it was the only dressed hardwood we could find of the appropriate size, we ended up with Merbau timber, an imported SE Asian species :-( Without the ability (i.e. we have no equipment) to dress the timber ourselves, we were pretty stuck, as even any recycled hardwood we could find needed cutting down and dressing. Argh!

Anyway with all this cleaning and preparation for visitors etc, I may not blog again until after Christmas (and I imagine most people barely have time to read any blogs anyway, LOL), so to everyone, I hope you have a wonderful, joyous festive season :-D